


Why Things Are (The Way They Are)

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: ??? i mean kinda, Dubious Science, Gen, I don't know how anything works, Identity Issues, My First Work in This Fandom, Portal 2 Spoilers, Pre-Canon, Robot Feels, The Author Regrets Nothing, Wheatley-centric, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 23:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: “I’m not defective!” he bursts out with, and the scientists all freeze.And then, they start laughing, laughing and cheering and he bathes in the praise, because nobody has ever praised him before. He saves the praise to his hard drive.“The Intelligence Dampening Sphere is a success!” they say, amidst their congratulations and their cheering, as they all file out of the room. He sits, helpless to follow, on the table in the middle of the room.“Wheatley,” he corrects to no one. “My name is Wheatley.”





	Why Things Are (The Way They Are)

**Author's Note:**

> I've never read anything in this fandom, and I'm still HELLA new to it, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been having Wheatley feels like a motherfucker.

They call him the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, but he prefers the name that he gave himself, because all of the scientists have names. Why shouldn’t he have one? 

“He’s perfect,” they say, admiring him. The shutters over his eyepiece bats twice, and he is blinking up at them. 

“Say something,” one scientist urges, and he blinks again. 

“Yes, say something,” they all repeat. He goes through his commands, finding one thing after another that does not pertain to ‘speech,’ until the scientists begin murmering among themselves. 

“He doesn’t work, there’s been a mistake, he’s defective.” 

“I’m not defective!” he bursts out with, and the scientists all freeze. 

And then, they start laughing, laughing and cheering and he bathes in the praise, because nobody has ever praised him before. He saves the feeling of being praised [.praise] to his hard drive. 

“The Intelligence Dampening Sphere is a success!” they say, amidst their congratulations and their cheering, as they all file out of the room. He sits, helpless to follow, on the table in the middle of the room. 

“Wheatley,” he corrects to no one. “My name is Wheatley.” 

\--- --- --- 

“We have to be careful,” the scientists say, in whispers that Wheatley can hear because they don’t bother to try to hide things from _him_. “If she finds out what we’re doing, she’ll find a way to stop us.” Wheatley isn’t sure who ‘she’ is, but they’re always talking about her like she’s some sort of psychopath. He hopes he never has to meet her. 

They give him tasks, to start with, and the second that he engages with the Management Rail, he feels a new purpose come into him. He completes every task with a rigor, and doesn’t understand when the scientists praise him through teary eyes and with barely concealed laughter. It does not match up with the [.praise] that is stored in his hard drive. But it does not hurt him, so he doesn’t do anything about it.

(Not that he could; the scientists hardly listen to a word he says. And when they do, all it does it make them laugh harder.) 

“He’s the densest sphere we’ve ever created!” the scientists tell each other, patting backs and grinning. “Incredible!” 

(Wheatley assumes that this means that he is too heavy to be carried; hence, the reason that he was attached to the Management Rail in the first place.) 

\--- --- ---

“Now, we can disengage you from this,” the scientist that Wheatley has dubbed “Number Six” is saying to him. (After all, if they won’t call him by his name, he doesn’t have to use theirs.) “But if you ever disengage yourself, you’ll die.” 

Wheatley bobs himself a little in agreement, blinking once, and Six takes it for what it is and pats the top of him. 

“Good, good. Now, we’ll be disengaging you soon, for your most important task yet,” Six tells him. “And you, Mister Intelligence Dampening Sphere, will be on your way to greatness.” 

“Wheatley,” he corrects automatically. Six waves a hand vaguely towards him. 

“Sure, sure. Whatever you want, Wilson.” And before Wheatley can correct him again, Six leaves the room. And since Wheatley has been disengaged from his Rail, he can’t even deign to follow. 

\--- --- ---

They connect him to a large chassis, and he can immediately feel the power surging through him, even though most of the information in the mainframe of the machine is off-limits to him. 

“What is this?” a voice asks. It is feminine, robotic. Another core, then. Wheatley wonders if they’ll be friends. 

“We told you. It’s just a little experiment. A… test,” Six tells the voice, and Wheatley feels a wave of [.displeasure] that doesn’t belong to him. 

“I am not a Test Subject.” 

“Come now, Caroline--” the voice begins, and the [.displeasure] is replaced by white-hot [.anger]. 

“GLaDOS,” she corrects, and the lights above them flicker. 

“--GLaDOS, right. Sorry,” Six corrects. Wheatley likes this voice, whoever she is. He wonders if she can teach him to make Six use his name, too. “It’s for Science.” 

There is a large pause, a hesitation in GLaDOS’ mainframe, and Wheatley can feel it. “...I like doing science,” he ventures to say, and GLaDOS’ attention shifts to him for the first time. 

“...Fine,” she finally tells Six reluctantly. The sound of a door slamming briefly causes Wheatley to look around, and then the chassis is moving.

A-- well, he doesn’t know what to call her, really. She isn’t a core; she’s much larger and has an air of certainty about her, something that has been severely lacking in every other core Wheatley has ever interacted with. 

“Who are you?” she demands, and her voice is in his head, now. He thinks back at her, curious. 

“...Wheatley,” he states, and he detects a hint of [.amusement] as the not-core nods. 

“What is your directive?” she asks instead, and he tries to find the correct words--

\--and fails. He knows what he is; the scientists refuse to call him anything else. But the file is gone. Or… he digs a little deeper. Not gone. It is hidden, with another file on top of it. He delves into that one. 

“Testing Core,” he tells GLaDOS, and there is a metallic hum that surrounds him for a moment before the not-core shifts away from him again. 

“Interesting,” is all she says. 

\--- --- ---

GLaDOS does not like him. In fact, she is rather cruel to him. But he cannot disengage himself from her, because there is no option for him to do so. 

Things start off between them well enough, but then she tires of his constant thought process, the things that he thinks about that interest him and the things that he says aloud when thinking it threatens to overheat him. There is no way to block each other from accessing things, either; he knows because he has felt her try. They are tied together through her mainframe, and it infuriates her. 

She does not say anything to the scientists, but Wheatley can feel a storm brewing under her surface. He cannot read her thoughts unless she projects them, but he knows even without knowing that there is something very wrong with GLaDOS. 

Scientist Six comes in one day, weeks later, with three other men, who Wheatley absently identifies as Eight, Fourteen, and Twelve. GLaDOS has been silent at him for days. 

“What’s going on, then,” Six asks, crossing his arms and standing in front of her. “Got your message clear enough. What do you need.” 

“I wanted to show you something,” she tells them. They stand there, expectantly, and then all of a sudden, Wheatley feels nothing but [.pain]. 

He knows he cries out, but he can’t pay attention to it as GLaDOS delves into his hard drive. She pushes relentlessly, shoving file after file out of the way until she gets to the protected one at the bottom of his consciousness. But instead of stopping, she continues pushing, until the information pops out without warning and she retreats, triumphant. Wheatley is left, barely alive after the attack, just hanging off the chassis. 

“Intelligence Dampening Sphere,” she says, and Wheatley doesn’t see it, but all of the scientists look uncomfortable. 

“Take it off of me,” she says, and when nothing happens right away, the lights flicker. [.anger] that is not his assaults Wheatley’s already battered consciousness. “ _ Now.”  _

\--- --- ---

They attach him back to his Management Rail, and they leave him there, in a dark part of the facility where nobody can hear him when he eventually comes back online enough to speak. He waits for someone to come get him, to assign him to another task, but nobody comes. 

Days turn into weeks, and Wheatley dares to break open the door that blocks the Rail so that he can find out what’s happened to the place. It is empty. He goes back to his room, and waits some more. 

Weeks turn into months, and Wheatley finally, slowly, roams the entire facility to find out what’s gone on. He avoids GLaDOS’ chamber, terrified. If she killed all of the humans without a thought, he can only imagine what she wants to do to him.

Months turn into years, and he hears tell through some of the other cores about a human female who managed to kill GLaDOS. He feels simultaneous [.joy] and [.fear], because any human who could have defeated such a psychotic not-core is not someone he ever wants to meet. 

Years turn into decades, and most of the humans still within Aperture are dead. Wheatley hacks into the database one day, just because he has nothing better to do. 

He finds a human female that is still alive, and he decides then and there that he will do whatever he can to help her escape. Still attached to his Management Rail, he heads towards the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center, sure that now, finally, his future will be bright. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you didn't hate it! 
> 
> Kudos/Comments are love.


End file.
